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Saturday, November 30, 2013

’Twas the
month before Christmas, and all through the flat
Not a surface was clean of flour or fat
Pastry and cutters were strewn all around
In the hope that good eating soon would abound

The
shortbread was nestled all snug on their trays,
While the oven was hot, as it had been for days.
And I in an apron, with a slogan ironic
Had just settled down for a nice gin and tonic

When into my
head popped an unsettling thought,
I sprang to my feet feeling distraught.
Away to the pantry I flew like a flash,
Tore open the doors and spilled out my stash.

I worried I’d find nothing but squishy sultanas,
As appetising as nasty overripe bananas.
When, by what vision my wondering eyes should be lit,
But dark chocolate shavings, cranberries and hazelnut bits.

And crystallised ginger, merjool dates and figs
A small number of raisins, apricots and cinnamon twigs.
Two large granny smith apples, shiny and grated
And candied citrus peel, albeit dated!

Now cardamom! now, nutmeg! now, orange brandy!
on cloves, on brown sugar with a sweetness of candy!
Finally blanched almonds, chopped, toasted and browned!
All tossed from the cupboard and onto the ground.

Then, in a
twinkling, I chopped up the fruit
And stirred in mandarin marmalade made by Aunt Jude.
I added the nuts and the apple and mixed it around,
stirred through the chocolate and spices, whole and ground.

I splashed in the brandy, until all was gooey and wet,
And covered with cling wrap to allow it to set.
Then after a week I made more buttered shortbread,
(Although store bought shortcrust would work well instead).

I pressed the
pastry to line a small muffin tin,
And filled with the fruit mince up to the brim
And laying atop each a star or stylized tree,
I created some goodies both delicious and twee.

When the last
star was fixed, I brushed with egg glaze,
And sprinkled with sugar, then picked up the trays
popped them into the oven, pre-heated and warm,
And sat back to wait for the pies to transform

After twenty
five minutes, the timer gave a screaming,
And I pulled out the tarts, golden and gleaming.
After a minute or two, I popped them onto a rack
To cool down and settle before I could snack

As popped my
feet up to rest and relax
I heard the sound of a thief scoffing still-too-hot snacks
But I heard him exclaim, that prince of my heart,
"Happy Christmas to all, it’s a bloody great mince tart”.

* clearly a homage to Clement Clarke Moore

Fruit mince
tarts

... are an inexact
science. Traditionally fruit mince did in fact contain minced lard (creamy pig
fat), which made them ridiculously rich and luxurious. It can be hard to source
these days, and really, the caloric load of these babies doesn’t need further
encouragement.

100 grams
grated or finely chopped very dark chocolate (it’s important for the chocolate
to be really bitter to off-set the sweetness of all the fruit)

1 jar of
marmalade

125 ml brandy
(I use orange brandy, but any will do)

½ cup brown
sugar

1 tsp
cinnamon

1 tsp ground
ginger

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp ground cardamom

½ tsp ground cloves

2 large green
apples, peeled and grated

Mix everything
together. The mixture should be sticky and a little bit goopy (it’s very
forgiving. A super sloppy mixture makes softer, smoother mince pies, thicker,
chunkier mixture makes a denser, crumble pie filling). Leave in the fridge for
at least three whole days, and up to two weeks.

After a week
...

Heat oven to 180 degrees celsius.Line shallow
muffin tin with rounds of shortbread mixture or shortcrust pastry. My tins are
almost magical in their non-stick-ness, so I don’t line or grease them. Use muffin-tin
liners if you’re worried about the pastry cases sticking.

Fill with a heaped
tablespoon of fruit mince mixture (or until level the top of the crust). Top
with a star (or make a lid, sealed to the case with a bit of egg wash – if you
do this, make sure you poke a wee hole in the lid to let the steam escape, otherwise
you may end up with exploding pies ...). Brush with egg wash and pop into a
moderate over for about 20 to 25 minutes (they’ll smells toasty and buttery,
and be golden on top when they’re done). Leave in the tins until almost cool
(otherwise the pies might break apart when you try to remove them from the
tin).

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Slow braising lamb is not exactly rocket science. Even so, I can hardly claim it’s my own invention. I pinched the idea off a cooking show. Definitely Rupert Rowley’s idea.*

I saw through his fancy-pants cheffery at once. Past the la-di-da herb crust and caramelised onion mousse and sous vide tender loin and poached baby vegetables and aligot (cheesy mash).

A shoulder of lamb, very simply braised on the stove top and then pressed under a weight overnight. Dense, meltingly tender, rich and sticky, reheated in the strained and reduced braising liquid.

Not rocket science. Not even Michelin Starred Science. Just a perfect idea.

After placating Little Chocolate Flavoured P- with the promise of apricot frangipane pie, I commandeered her wood panelled country kitchen. Stripped of complications, glass of wine in hand, I did absolutely nothing for six hours.**

Braising is nothing new. Just time consuming.

Squishing things after they’re cooked is probably not new either. But this technique I despise in commercially produced chicken nuggets and processed hams results in a moist gelatinous and impossibly dense slab of lamb, infused with the braising stock flavours and melt in the mouth succulent.

I craved, no, coveted, this lamb ever since I witnessed it via the magic of television. Worth the wait? Oh G-d yes.

* Hairy Bikers Tour of Britain, Derbyshire Episode. The recipe for the braised and pressed shoulder is unfortunately not included on the BBC website.

** Not, strictly speaking, true. For a little while I surfed the net looking at chocolate art, and I whipped up two frangipane pies, helped Bird with the pomme de terre au gratin AKA potato bake, roasted a leg of lamb, baked some sweet potatoes, made gravy and generally made a mess.

Rosemary infused braised, pressed lamb with lamb jus

Boned shoulder of lamb, approximately 1 kg (although size doesn’t matter)3 medium carrots, peeled and cut in half1 large brown onion, peeled and cut into eighths1 medium leek, cut into four pieces1 bay leaf2 sprigs rosemary½ bottle dry red wine*3 cups good quality beef stock (or a couple of beef bones, roasted in the oven for about an hour)Kitchen stringParchment paper (greaseproof paper), cut into a circle just a little larger than the saucepan, and with a 1 cm hole pinched in the centreFry pan and medium sized saucepan (just large enough to snuggle fit the piece of lamb)

Using kitchen string, tie the lamb up like a parcel. There is a neat way to do this that is a little like a blanket stitch and a little like a mobius strip (see this Epicurious video). Or, you could just tie it up any old way. This works too. Or ask your butcher to do it.

In a small fry pan, heat a small amount of olive oil. Add the tied lamb shoulder, turning occasionally to brown on all side.

At the same time, heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the saucepan and add the vegetables and herbs. Cook on a medium to high heat, stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked and starting to stick to the pan (but not burning).

When the vegetables are stating to stick, toss in half the wine and scrap around the pan to deglaze all the sticky vegetable sugars. Add the meat into the saucepans and deglaze the frying pan in the same way with the remaining wine, then tip that into the saucepan too. Add the beef stock (or bones) and add water (or wine or stock) to just the top of the meat.

Press the parchment paper onto the surface of the liquid and meat (like a second lid) and then place the lid on the saucepan. Turn the heat the lowest setting, and set to very gentle bubble away for about 5 to 6 hours. Check on it from time to time – make sure it does not dry out or burn onto the bottom of the saucepan, and gentle turn the meat over after about three hours.

When the meat is finished cooking, allow to cool slightly and then remove from the braising liquids and strain over the saucepan. Place onto clean parchment , cut the strings and discard, then wrap up like a Christmas present in the greaseproof paper. Tightly wrap this package in plastic wrap (I went several times around it all).

Place in a bake dish, then cover with another baking dish and then weight the top baking dish (I used a concrete statue of a cockerspaniel. You could use a brick). Leave overnight (food safety would probably dictate in the fridge, but I left it out on the kitchen bench).

Meanwhile, strain the braising liquid and discard the solids. Keep the liquid. That stuff is gold.

To serve: cut the lamb into neat portions. It is very dense and rich, so make them smaller than you think you might want.

In a small frying pan or shallow saucepan, heat a little olive oil and add the lamb portions. Add a few spoonfuls of braising liquid (which by now should have a lovely jelly like consistency), turn and add more liquid as it bubbles and thickens, until all sides of the lamb pieces are richly glazed. Remove the lamb ready to serve. Add addition liquid to make a sauce, heat through until thick enough.

Place lamb onto a bed of pumpkin puree, spoon over some sauce and enjoy.

* For goodness sake, only cook with wine you will drink. It doesn’t need to be great wine, but it does have to be palatable

Whilst the cuisine of the West may currently not be on speaking terms with iceberg lettuce, having swapped our childhood salads of cubed cheese and grated carrot for frissee and witlof, Asian cuisine from China to Thailand has no such prejudices.

The crunchy bowl of an iceberg lettuce leaf is irreplaceable in Chinese san choi bao. Vietnamese chả giò are dangerously moreish, crisp deep fried pastries wrapped with mint and basil in iceberg leaves.

And torn chunks of iceberg hearts, tossed with sweet ripe tomatoes and thick slices of cucumber is the perfect cooling counterpoint to the volcanic combination of raw onion and chilli in Thai beef salad.

Cook the steak to medium rare on a grill pan or barbeque (Make sure your steak is at room temperature when you cook it. For a thickish steak, an inch and half or so thick, cook for 4 minutes on each side).

Set aside to rest for about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk together the chillies, garlic, oil, sugar, rind, half the lime juice, half the fish sauce and the soy sauce. Taste. Gradually add fish sauce and lime until the flavours balance (you want something that has ‘zing’ and a nice salty finish, without being mouth puckeringly sour or drinking sea-water salty).

Slice the steak into very thin strips. Toss through the dressing to coat and remove.

Add the lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes , onion and herbs to the dressing, toss to coat.

Pile the salad vegetables onto a plate, scatter the beef over the top, and drizzle with the dressing.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

In a characteristically excessive move, I procured a 9.7 kilo leg of beautifully cured ham for our very small Christmas gathering*, which I glazed with quince paste and cardamom and green ginger wine and lovingly studded with approximately twelve million cloves. We ate ham everyday for two weeks. And then I carved up the remaining five kilos, and packaged the slices and chunks and bones away in the freezer, dreaming of mid-winter pea-and-ham soups and ham and leek soufflés.

I don’t like waste. I ferret away kitchen scapes and old bones for stock. My freezer contains little zip lock bags of everything from stale bread crumbs to off cuts of potato and kohlrabi to a chicken carcass to prawn heads. You never know what you might need. Of course it’s frugal: throwing away food is the same as throwing away money. It’s also partly a political stance: when we waste food we are saying that the time and effort put into growing and rearing our food is disposable**. And it is so satisfying to make something delicious out of food that would otherwise be assigned to the trash.

Think of it as 3D Tetris for your tastebuds.

Ham. Diced carrot off-cuts. The first of this year’s tomato passata. Half an onion in the fridge. Celery. Celery powder. Half a bulb of fennel. Stolen rosemary. Tinned cannellini beans. Now I love baked beans. Not the sticky sweet navy-beans-in-tomato-sauce you can buy in a tin (although, to be fair, those bad boys are pretty healthy, providing you buy the low salt/low sugar brands). The old-school home-made kind, chunky and spicy and packed full of vegetables. It is my measure of a good breakfast cafe, the calibre of their ‘house-made beans’. And baked beans are precisely what the contents of my freezer suggests. All it needs it a little time to braise.

Best Christmas present ever.

* In addition to a two kilo turkey buff, and two chickens. Not to mention potato salad and zucchini and green bean salad with pangratto, and steamed carrots and four loaves of bread and roasted baby beatroots. For eight people. I have issues.

** You could argue that rather than saving money by not wasting food, we should just buy more food so that farmers are better recompensed. I say, let’s pay more money for food, thus better remunerating farmers and incentivising us consumers not to waste it. Food is way too cheap.

Saute the onions, garlic and vegetables (except tomatoes) in a large heavy based saucepan until soft, this will take about ten minutes. Add the spices, toast for about 1 minute, then add the tomatoes, fresh herbs and ham.

Bring to a simmer (add as little water if a bit dry) and cook for about half an hour to an hour, until thick and all the flavours are infused. Taste, and add salt if necessary.

Gently stir through the drained tinned beans (feel free to soak dried ones over night, I just love the convenience of tinned ones) and heat through.

Finish off with masses of fresh chopped parsley and a teaspoon of powdered celery leaves.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Some children will eat anything. The Pintos (my two nephews) will eat chicken, in nugget, ‘tuckey’ (that is, Kentucky Fried Chicken) and grilled form. That’s about it. And frozen vegetable mix with rehydrated mash potato. And ice berg lettuce. And ice-cream, chocolate, cake, ice-cream, cheese, chips (crisps and fries), pancakes with honey and bananas. Ok, so there are probably fussier children.

Home made chicken nuggets, crumbed with the crumbs of stale bread, baked and not deep fried, served with salad and vegetables manages to satisfy their limited appetites without destroying my principles.

Although I swear they can tell the difference. And to them, homemade is simply not as good. It lacks the salt and oil of pre-prepared chicken nuggets. The bread from which I make crumbs is multigrain, sourdough, denser and not as sweet or salty as a commercial crumb mix or batter. The vegetables are not as soft. The mash potatoes never as weirdly smooth as rehydrated powder (which I have never tasted and therefore cannot know how on earth I would emulate it).

And it’s hard work. Crumbing chicken (dip in milk, dip in flour, dip in egg, dip in crumbs ...), boiling potatoes then mashing them, dicing and blanching vegetables. I do this once in a blue moon. I get why countless parents don’t. It’s because they have something else to do with those several hours. Every day.

But what I don’t get is how chicken nuggets, of all things, became the food that children eat (also frozen fish fingers, a culinary abomination I cannot fathom). There are lots of things we could serve to children that take no time and do not come highly processed and swimming is sugar, salt and fat. And yet we, as a general culture, collectively facilitate frozen nuggets and frozen vegetables (which are actually not significantly processed, being snap frozen with little added to them) and pizza and packets of chips and muesli bars and cookies.

I’ll admit I don’t know the first thing about raising children. But the “food” we, as a society, now feed and make available to children, is also the food that we are collectively consuming as adults. Pre-prepared and packaged and frozen and take away foods. Foods low in nutrients and high in calories. Foods which don’t feature adequate vegetables and fruits. Foods with added fats and sugars and salts, well beyond what we need.

Our children may well recover from the food we feed them (although the stats are not encouraging. More children are more overweight than ever before recorded. Similarly, more adults. We will die fat but not alone). But we adults (on the whole) have not really demonstrated that we know any better. That we are able or willing to eat any differently.

Governments do little to intervene. Heaven forbid ‘they’ tell ‘us’ what to eat. But when say we don’t believe in the nanny state we are effectively saying ‘let us choose to make ourselves and our children sick’. When we compound this idiocy by further criticising ‘big taxes’ – which pay for schools and education programs and public health campaigns and hospitals – we are saying ‘please also make it impossible for us to treat the consequent illnesses’. No one is to blame, we are all to blame.

We buy convenient food because it is convenient. The price we pay – in dollars and in time – is simply not commensurate to the sugar-fat payload. Of course, there are healthy, cheap, quick alternatives. Salads. Lentils. Steamed vegetables. Brown rice. Fresh fruit. Porridge. Chickpeas. But they don’t taste nearly so sweet-salty-tasty (just like heroin is so much more effective than paracetamol).

Make it from scratch. Not every time, but once or twice. Know the effort that goes into making good food. Understand the ingredients. Read the labels. Read the nutritional information. If governments and business refuse to take responsibility for our health and wellbeing, and we refuse to let them, then let’s grow up and take responsibility for ourselves.

Preheat oven to 190ºc. Line two baking trays with baking paper and lightly brush with olive oil.

Cut the bread into chunks and blitz in a food processor with the garlic until finely crumbed. Season with salt and pepper and a little paprika (optional). Emply into a large bowl or plate.

Beat the eggs together in a dessert bowl, add about 2 tsbp water or milk. Set aside.

Pour the milk into a separate dessert bowl, set aside.

Place the cornmeal into a large bowl or plate.

From left to right, arrange the milk, cornmeal, egg and breadcrumbs.

Dip a chicken piece into the milk, then coat in cornmeal, then dip into the egg and then press into the bread crumbs. Place on the baking tray, and repeat.

Cook in the oven for approximately twelve minutes, turn each nugget over and cook for a further three to five minutes. They should be golden and crunchy (to test if cooked, cut one in half. It’s not rocket science).

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Peaches are late summer. The tangy sweet-sour of yellow peaches and the fragrant sugariness of white peaches, fuzzy-furry skin and juices dripping down my chin: bliss (albeit sticky bliss).

I grew up on the remnants of a peach farm. I am never short of ideas about what to do with them*. Cut in half, drizzled with honey and scattered with flaked almonds, roasted in the oven for half an hour. Poached in sugar syrup for 30 minutes, then peeled to reveal the transferred pink tinge on the beautifully sweet and yielding fruit. Pureed and turned into sorbet (or better yet, into a Bellini). Sliced and tossed with jamon and buffalo mozzarella and rocquette. Cooked down into jam, like my mum used to make, with walnuts, served with cheddar. Atop a frangipane tart. In tea cake. The classic combination: peaches and cream.

So many temptations. Such a short season.

Cheese is just grown up cream. And peaches are peaches. Classic combination.

* I mean, after you tire of eating them fresh and ripe in the sun. As if you ever would. I bought a kilo and half this evening and ate one on the way home. Even though I knew I was using them for dinner.

To poach the peaches: bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Carefully place peaches into the boiling water, simmer for about ten minutes. remove with a slotted spoon. When cool enough to handle, peel off the skin. Dice into small dice (about ¼ inch)

To grill asparagus: heat a grill pan to very hot. Brush asparagus spears with olive oil, grill until tender and char marked (about 5 minutes). Set aside (they don’t need to be hot when you serve the salad).

To make the chilli syrup: in a small saucepan bring the vinegar, honey and chilli to a simmer. Reduce by half. Taste. Add extra dried chilli flakes if not hot enough. Or substitue sweet chilli sauce. It's up to you.

To make the salsa: toss together peaches, basil, fennel, onion, red pepper. Season with a little black pepper and stir through two to three tablespoons of the chilli syrup. Taste. If too sweet, add a little lemon juice.

To fry haloumi. Heat a tbsp oil in a non-stick fry pan (or saganaki, the pan for which the named). When hot, add haloumi slices. Leave to cook until the slices are deeply browned (or until your smoke alarm goes off), then turn over and cook the other side. When cooked, squeeze over some lemon juice.

To serve: place a handful of rocquette on a place. Arrange haloumi slices and asparagus spears, top with peach salsa. Drizzle with a little chilli syrup if at all pretentious.

* Type of cheese. Texture kind of like rubber, but in really, really good, salty way. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloumi. In a pinch you could substitute fetta, if you dusted it with flour before frying (I have done this) – but be very careful as fetta melts much more quickly.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Kitchen Helper, who I love*, has a well-honed and perversely indiscriminate palate. That is, an appreciation, certainly, of extremely tasty and fancy food, but also a willingness to eat just about anything. This makes experimentation, travel to weird and exotic places and my very occasional lack of effort** pretty much risk free, culinary speaking. On the other hand, Kitchen Helper is a rubbish muse. Primary contribution to meal planning? “Something light. And healthy”. Every. Single. Time.

We eat a lot of salad.

In between summer storms the weather is muggy. Of course, talking about the weather is so passé, so ordinary, so boring (a little like my muse's efforts). And yet with flash-floods and cyclones and violent and damaging storms it is impossible not to be hyperaware of the moisture in the air, the colour of the sky, the direction of the wind, flashes of lightening.

And Kitchen Helper is moping because of the weather, like a chocolate Labrador melting in the sun. It is, apparently, too hot today.

On days like this there is no need to consult (okay, on no days ever is it ever necessary to consult, given the uniformity of response). Because a salad is perfect.

But not just any salad. Oh sure, I love a good Caesar salad or salade Lyonnais or Greek salad, salty with olives and fetta. But tropical conditions call for tropical salads, sour and salty and spicy and so very, very fresh with ginger and lime zest. Bright and colourful and refreshing, just about any crisp vegetables (or fruit) that can be eaten raw can be shredded and tossed in. Snow peas. Green papaya or mango. Carrots. Celery. Just get the dressing perfectly balanced and go to town. The resulting pile is crisp and tangy and hot and pungent with stinky fish sauce and so absolutely right in 90% humidity. And light. And healthy.

* Deeply, passionately, always

** Yes, there are days when I really cannot be bothered. On those days we eat paella. I have no idea how paella became the standby dish of appathetic cookery, but it works out well, because routine as it is for me to cook now, it always tastes amazing.

Preheat oven to 200ºc. Rub chicken with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt. Place into the oven on a tray, cook for 30-40 minutes (until juices run clear from a knife inserted into the thigh bone joint). Remove from oven and rest for 20 minutes (or do the day before, and have cold instead of just warm). If you like, you can glaze the chicken in equal parts honey and soy sauce before cooking.

When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the carcase and shred with your fingers into smallish strips. Remove the skin if you prefer (this makes it even lighter and healthier).

To make the dressing, whisk together all ingredients. Taste. Does it have a good flavour balance? Adjust – if too salty, add a little extra oil and vinegar, if too sweet, more vinegar and lime. Too oily? More fish sauce (go easy though). Way too spicy? A bit more sugar. The longer you leave the dressing to sit, the more the flavours will infuse and develop.

Toss chicken and all salad ingredients except peanuts through the dressing until coated.

To serve, pile portions onto a plate and scatter with roasted peanuts.